The second half of the nineteenth century for African Americans was filled with both promise and disillusionment. The passing of the Reconstruction Amendments during the period of Reconstruction outlawed slavery, extended citizenship to African Americans, and granted them the right to vote. Reconstruction promised Blacks in the South equality, something they had long been denied. Immediately after the end of the Civil War, African Americans began to exercise their political power. For instance, in the first South Carolina Legislature during Reconstruction, the majority of the legislative body was composed of African Americans. With the abolishment of slavery, freed people faced a number of barriers, including relocating loved ones. Slavery had torn families and friends apart, spreading them across the South with their locations unknown to their loved ones. After the Civil War, Blacks took out ads in newspapers searching for their missing friends and families, seeking information on their whereabouts. But the biggest obstacle Black Americans faced was a white southern society that wanted to return the South to how it was before the war.